After a gap of almost two years the Hastings based multi award winning singer and pianist has recently launched upon us her fourth recording in collaboration with producer James McMillan. Her previous album "Seaside" was always going to be a very hard act to follow (see our review of September 2015). Somehow she has achieved this and raised the bar even higher.

As you would expect each lyric here is drenched with the depth and emotion that we have come to expect from this lady. There are nine supporting musicians involved with the project with Kirk Whalum, the Memphis born tenor player, who was a corner stone of many Whitney Houston recordings, making a marked contribution with strong and cliche free solos on a number of tracks. As always the choice of material is excellent with five well known standards receiving highly personalised treatments alongside classics from the likes of Jacques Brel, Stevie Wonder and Tom Waits.

There is a wonderful lengthy rendition of Don Raye and Gene De Paul's "You Don't Know What Love Is" which is both low key and profound with some fine guitar from Mark Jaimes. Two pieces associated with Dusty Springfield, the 1996 hit "Goin' Back" and the Nashville born anthem "It's a Fine Line" are both given a new and fresh identity. The title track "The Right To Love" is both haunting and heartfelt and benefits from James McMillan's superb trumpet interlude. It is however the two Hoagy Carmichael pieces that stand out above all others. The 1939 classic "I Get Along Without You Very Well" with words taken from a poem by Jane Brown Thompson are sung with great passion as a dedication to the vocalist's late mother. The superb modernistic arrangement and imaginative phrasing of Johnny Mercer's words to the immortal "Skylark" could not possibly have been bettered.

All in all this is yet another top quality album from one of Britain's very best jazz artists.

Reviewed by Jim Burlong

ECM celebrates 50 years of music production with the Touchstones series of re-issues